It'll be Bush-Carey, Not Bush-Kerry

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Sept. 16 — Former President George H.W. Bush and former New York Gov. Hugh Carey will be the headline speakers at the Archdiocese of New York's 59th annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner Oct. 21, the Associated Press reported.

The arrangement breaks with the tradition of inviting the major presidential candidates to the dinner, which raises money for health care.

Archdiocese spokesman Joseph Zwilling said that issues in this year's campaign “could provoke divisiveness and disagreement and could detract” from the spirit of the dinner, which is seen as a light-hear ted tribute to Smith, the first Catholic to run for president from a major party. Zwilling did not identify specific issues.

The wire service said “the relationship between the Catholic Church and the presidential candidates was put into focus” after Vatican Cardinal Francis Arinze announced that Communion should be denied to Catholic politicians who support abortion.

The Bush and Kerry campaigns did not comment on what the Associated Press referred to as “the dinner snubs.”

No Smiling About Procter & Gamble Position

THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sept. 17 — The conservative Christian groups Focus on the Family and the American Family Association want a boycott of Procter & Gamble products Crest and Tide, charging that the company is aligning itself with homosexual-rights groups.

The Times reported that the groups are angry at a statement on the company's internal website opposing a law in Procter & Gamble's hometown of Cincinnati that exempts homosexuals from special civil-rights protection.

A spokesman for Procter & Gamble said the company opposed the Cincinnati statute but not a separate effort to amend a ban of same-sex “marriage” in the Ohio Constitution. “The issue that these organizations are trying to put in our laps is one that we have not taken a position on,” the spokesman said.

Focus on the Family's James Dobson told The Times, “For Procter & Gamble to align itself with radical groups committed to redefining marriage in our country is an affront to its customers.”

Story Gets Worse for Deal Hudson

THE WASHINGTON TIMES, Sept. 22 — Deal Hudson will resign as publisher of CRISIS magazine at the end of the year, The Washington Times reported. The newspaper said Hudson made the decision after five of the magazine's most influential columnists (including “some of the nation's best-known Catholic scholars”) told the board they would leave unless Hudson was deposed.

Hudson resigned as an unpaid adviser to the Bush campaign when an Aug. 19 story in the National Catholic Reporter raised allegations of sexual misconduct a decade ago. Anger over that story, according to The Times, drove the columnists to demand Hudson's resignation.

The Reporter called its Hudson piece a “profile,” but The Washington Times referred to it as an “exposé.” Hudson plans to be involved with fundraising for CRISIS.